Monday, January 6, 2014

A Minnesota man is in custody on charges of arson after police say that he set fire to his house and then blamed President Barack Obama and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).

Patch reported that fire was reported coming from the Minnetonka home of 49-year-old Ronald Gary Bailey after 9 p.m. on Dec. 1.

According to court records, Bailey asked firefighters responding to the call when they would be finished putting out the blaze so that he could “start the rest of my house on fire.”

But by the time that firefighters had extinguished the fire, the home had been destroyed.

Standing at the end of his driveway, Bailey explained to them: “You should know, you did this, the CIA implanted a computer in my brain and body.”

“What do I have to do, how big of a bomb do I have to build before the police respect me?” Bailey said, according to court documents.

Officers who were transporting Bailey to Hennepin County Medical Center’s behavioral Crisis Intervention Center discovered that he had a loaded .380 caliber pistol concealed in his pocket.

At some point, Bailey told officers that he was the “first half-man/half-robot created by the government.” He said that the CIA and FBI had bugged his house, and blamed “Obama” and the “CIA” for causing the fire that burned down his home.

The resources and the breadth of the organization make it singular in American politics: an operation conducted outside the campaign finance system, employing an array of groups aimed at stopping what its financiers view as government overreach. Members of the coalition target different constituencies but together have mounted attacks on the new health-care law, federal spending and environmental regulations.

Key players in the Koch-backed network have already begun engaging in the 2014 midterm elections, hiring new staff members to expand operations and strafing House and Senate Democrats with hard-hitting ads over their support for the Affordable Care Act.

Its funders remain largely unknown; the coalition was carefully constructed with extensive legal barriers to shield its donors.

But they have substantial firepower. Together, the 17 conservative groups that made up the network raised at least $407 million during the 2012 campaign, according to the analysis of tax returns by The Washington Post and the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group that tracks money in politics.

A labyrinth of tax-exempt groups and limited-liability companies helps mask the sources of the money, much of which went to voter mobilization and television ads attacking President Obama and congressional Democrats, according to tax filings and campaign finance reports.

The coalition’s revenue surpassed that of the Crossroads organizations, a super PAC and non­profit group co-founded by GOP strategist Karl Rove that together brought in$325 million in the last cycle.

The left has its own financial muscle, of course; unions plowed roughly $400 million into national, state and local elections in 2012. A network of wealthy liberal donors organized by the group Democracy Alliance mustered about $100 million for progressive groups and super PACs in the last election cycle, according to a source familiar with the totals.

But that means the Right outspent the Left by several hundred million in 2012, and will do so again during the midterms. What was a solid victory for President Obama resulted in only a few pickups for the Democrats in Congress, and the goal now is to finish what they started in 2010: buying out the rest of the competitive state-level races that will give the GOP unprecedented power in state legislatures and Governor's mansions.

Should they gain control of the Senate as well as expand their power in states like Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan, President Obama would be the only person standing between them and complete control of the country. The reality is they are trying to relegate the Democrats to a West Coast + New England regional party.

2014 is the battleground. If they take control after November, 2016 will merely be postponing the inevitable.

Liz Cheney, whose upstart bid to unseat Wyoming Sen. Mike Enzi sparked a round of warfare in the Republican Party and even within her own family, is dropping out of the Senate primary, sources told CNN late Sunday.

Cheney, the eldest daughter of former Vice President Dick Cheney, began telling associates of her decision over the weekend and could make an official announcement about the race as early as Monday.

Cheney's surprising decision to jump into the race, an announcement made in a YouTube video last summer, roiled Republican politics in the Wyoming, a state Dick Cheney represented in Congress for five terms before moving up the Republican food chain in Washington.

Enzi was a low-key presence in Washington who was elected in 1996 and, with few blemishes, amassed a conservative voting record in the Senate. He expressed public annoyance at Cheney's decision to mount a primary challenge. A number of his Senate colleagues quickly rallied to his side and pledged support for his re-election bid.

There was little public polling of the race, but two partisan polls released last year showed Enzi with a wide lead, an assessment mostly shared by GOP insiders watching the race.

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With Republicans controlling the House and Senate and the Trump Regime now in charge of the Executive, there's still a crumbling global economy imperiling the world, rising nationalism and deadly racism across Europe and Asia, a seemingly endless war against terror, a federal government nobody trusts or believes in, global climate change putting us on the brink of destruction and a Village media that barely does its job on even the best day.

Needless to say there's a lot of Stupid out there when we need solutions. Dangerous levels of Stupid.

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